Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
A friend of mine sent me an email explaining that life was pretty much the same as it always had been. As she said “just the samo samo”.
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WHAT do you suppose she thinks she said?
Is she thinking that’s a nonsense word the way ‘yadda yadda’ is?
Or is “samo” a word that has some meaning for her?
You’ve got to ask her—nicely, of course!
I mean, this is the front line here! You have immediate access to a primacy source. Go, investigate, and bring us back the spoils.
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I’ve heard this, too, but I don’t think it’s an eggcorn. It’s always struck me as a cute, breezy “abbreviation” that doesn’t evoke any particular alternate imagery.
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Given the context in which my friend wrote this, I am quite sure she meant “same-old, same-old”, as the “just the same old things are happening; nothing new is going on”. I believe this counts as an eggcorn because it is a mis-spelling derived from someone being unfamiliar with the individual words of a phrase that she has heard from somewhere else, but never read. I think she simply misheard someone saying “same-old, same-old”. People do tend to drop off the endings of words (such as “bake goods” for “baked goods”).
Going directly to the source is a good idea, and I would ask her, but this was many years ago and we are no longer in communication.
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The missing element still seems to be the emergence of any new imagery. If both expressions mean exactly the same thing conceptually, then there can be no eggcorn. Does “samo” refer to something other than “same old”?
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Could be that some things like this occur when someone has a vague idea that the expression comes from a foreign language, like ipso facto, quid pro quo, deja vu, per se, etc. A person used to hearing these phrases, who understands their general use and meaning, and who knows that they aren’t English originally, but who doesn’t know the literal meaning of the words themselves might perhaps mishear or invent other phrases that have a meaning they understand but might sound like they are derived from another language. I can imagine someone have a vague, almost subconscious feeling like that toward the phrase “samo samo.”
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could it be in her head rather like old English folk music – everything is just the same-o
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will buy a ridiculous hat – Scott Adams (author of Dilbert)
Build a man a fire and he will be warm for a day; set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life – Terry Pratchett
http://blog.meteorit.co.uk
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I’ve been thinking about this one.
Wouldn’t it still be an eggcorn if there is NO image associated w/ “samo”?
“yadda yadda / yada yada” doesn’t really have any true meaning associated w/ it; it’s vaguely onomopaeic. (I see that Merriam-Webster gives its etymology thusly: “alteration of earlier yatata idle chatter, probably ultimately from British dialect and argot yatter-yatter to chatter, of imitative origin,” but I’ll bet you a nickel that no current American user of the phrase knows this or has ever heard either of those terms.)
Similarly “badda bing”
“Mmm-hmm” means something, but it doesn’t stand for any words.
Similarly, “uh-huh” and “huh-uh”—mere sounds, that we have assigned a meaning.
So, if “samo” is either just nonsense syllables assigned a meaning, or if it’s the word “same” w/ some sort of semi-musical ending tacked on, wouldn’t that still qualify as an eggcorn?
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I guess my first reaction is that it had never occurred to me that the people using this didn’t know that they were using a version of the phrase “same old, same old.” I always assumed that they were purposely and knowingly employing a jocular version of the usual idiom. But, no, I never actually asked anyone. (One acquaintance I associate with this is a relative; I’ll try to remember to ask her if we talk in the near future.)
I guess it’s possible (though I’m not sure it’s likely) that some people have picked this up as a phrase meaning “the same old stuff, the usual, the predictable” without realizing the connection to “same old, same old.” But even if that’s the case, I don’t think it’s an eggcorn. Such people would be giving those “nonsense” syllables that meaning because it’s carried over from the original form of the phrase—even if they’re unaware of the original. The sound’s altered, but there’s no reinterpretation involved—and that reanalysis is crucial for an eggcorn.
Someone might argue that “samo samo” doesn’t seem to mean the same thing as “same old, same old.” If so, it’s still not an eggcorn, since an eggcorn should ultimately mean more or less the same thing as the original in more or less the same context.
I want it to be clear here that I’m not arguing that certain “nonsense” words can’t have a conventional, widely understood meaning. But that’s not enough in this case for eggcorn status.
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I posted this last year:
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/viewtopic.php?id=330
and nobody responded. Hrmph. <sulks>
(just kidding)
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Gilibug—That’s true. And your original post raised useful questions about the eggcornicity of this. But a year and a half ago, we had far fewer active regulars on the forum than we do now, so the chances that a given post would get a response were much lower. While I feel bad that your post got overlooked, the difference between then and now is a measure of the degree to which things have improved. And it’s getting just plain hard to keep track of things—we’ll hit 3800 posts today or tomorrow.
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“Samo samo” turned up today on the CBC news forum.
Calcium and heart attacks
Here we go again
Please take this pill it will help you
couple of years later
the Pill may raise heart attack by 30%
Samo Samo it like they could not figure out first
I went poking around for more on this and found that there is more to the story than meets the eye. First, a recent post on the Grammarphobia blog goes into considerable detail on possible connections between “samo samo” and “same old same old”. A solid case can be made that “samo samo” preceded its alto ego by a couple of centuries. Google books provides the pertinent section from the account of the travels of one William Dampier, English buccaneer, that were widely read. His accounts were apparently unusually accurate.
Dampier’s account of the Philippines, from a voyage ending 1691
When we came to their houses, they would always be praising the English, as declaring that the English and Mindanaians were all one. This they exprest by putting their two fore-fingers close together, and saying that the English and Mindanaians were “samo, samo” that is, all one.
Perhaps it is this passage which was used in a 19th century treatise on language to draw deep connections between disparate languages:
Transactions of the Philological Society, 1856
Another argument in favour of a connexion of very old standing between the Finn and other European languages, may be drawn from the numerous cases in which it enables us to explain words without apparent derivation in their own language. One of the cases of Finn sama, the same, is samalla, in the same; samalla muodofla, in the same manner; but samalla alone is used elliptically in the sense of ’ at the same moment,’ agreeing with Lat. simul. A somewhat different modification of the same root in a widely different language, gives Malay samo-samo, together, from samo, the same.
A more recent Google Books hit, from 1963, for samo samo.
Epoch collection
“Samo-samo, Wally, fifty a week plus comish. Draw it every two weeks, samo-samo.”
Google Books located a same old-same old from 1906, where it looked as though it needed no explanation. There has been lots of time for cross-fertilization. If it occurred, it looks like it went samo >> same old.
Last edited by David Bird (2010-07-30 17:40:37)
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Blow me away — I’d never have imagined that one.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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So in this case the chicken came before the eggcorn?
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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This is the kind of thing I find interestingly suggestive, but a million miles from good evidence. The main problem here is simple—no one seems to have been using “samo samo” in the same way that we use “same old, same old.” And there’s not even much evidence that returning GIs were bringing the pidgin phrase back with them to the States—David’s citation for “samo samo” from 1963 seems to be about it on books.google.com, and Grammarphobia doesn’t bother citing any modern evidence at all.
And the other problem for me here is that the repetition of “same old, same old” makes sense—it mimics the tedious repetitiousness of the same old thing, every goshdarn day. Maybe “samo samo” played a role in this—in the absence of evidence, anything’s possible—but it’s easy to imagine the contemporary phrase arising without any mediation from a Japanese-English contact language. So far, the “samo samo” theory looks like a recent folk etymology.
David’s citation of “same old—same old” from a 1906 novel turns out to be a representation of the kind of inarticulate repetition that precedes passing out—which the character does (or pretends to do) two words later. I can’t find any pre-WWII citations that look good, but Montego Joe had a hit song in 1964 called “Same Old, Same Old.” It’s apparently jazz instrumental, so there are no lyrics to help us out here, but it may suggest that the phrase got started a at least a decade earlier than currently thought.
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Pat wrote:
no one seems to have been using “samo samo†in the same way that we use “same old, same old.†[…] the repetition of “same old, same old†makes sense—it mimics the tedious repetitiousness of the same old thing, every goshdarn day.
I hear what you’re saying, but the argument seems weak to me. Given the usage of samo samo (and assuming it was pronounced [ˈseʲmoˈseʲmo] rather than [ˈsamoˈsamo]) to mean “it’s the same, it’s all one†the shift to “it’s one and the same†or “it’s all the same†is not great. The reduplication in Malay or Mindanaian very very likely can bear the same meaning as repetition does in English, namely signaling replication of some sort wrt the meaning. (Reduplication is universally likely to be iconic in this way. It often has other meaning possibilities also, however, and perhaps the original M or M meaning was somewhat different.) Even if the reduplication meant something different in M or M, it could be easily taken by English hearers of its use to indicate not just repetition but tedious repetition. So I’m not convinced by your argument (as I understand it) that samo samo is, because of its meaning, not a likely candidate for a source for same ol’ same ol’ .
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The argument that same ol’ same ol’ could easily be formed independently may be somewhat stronger, but it must also be recognized that it is a pretty weird formation. We don’t habitually use a repeated adjectival phrase, sans modified noun(s), to mean the omitted noun (presumably “thing�). Can you think of another example? Even an unreduplicated one?
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All that being said, I find myself agreeing with a watered down version of your first phrase: this is all interesting and suggestive, but it hardly constitutes conclusive evidence.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Given the usage of samo samo (and assuming it was pronounced [ˈseʲmoˈseʲmo] rather than [ˈsamoˈsamo]) to mean “it’s the same, it’s all one†the shift to “it’s one and the same†or “it’s all the same†is not great.
Hmmnnh—that seems like an unlikely argumentative tack to run with in this case. If the shift is so obvious, why hasn’t it left any trace at all? Why hasn’t anyone found a single instance of “samo samo” being used in the current context in the TWENTY-FIVE YEARS between the time that “Samo Samo” was supposed to have been carried back to the States after WWII and the time when the first clear instances of “same old, same old” were recorded? And we’re talking about 1945-1970, 25 very well-documented years. Your claim makes the puzzling lack of evidence harder to understand, not easier; if you’re right, if the shift in usage is a natural, it’s really difficult to understand why no one was caught making the transition between the two forms.
And for that matter, where are all the instances of “samo samo” being recorded in ANY context? At this point we don’t have anything approaching evidence for a widespread use of the phrase for any purpose. David B provided one example from 1963, and we can’t even know it was influenced by the supposed Japanese instances. Sure, I think things can spread “under the radar,” but it’s not just that we don’t have any evidence of spreading here—so far, we have one single data point. And not one instance in a war novel; not one in a diary; not a single one in a movie script. One measly instance of unknown origin! That’s terribly hard to explain given the scenario you describe.
The reduplication in Malay or Mindanaian very very likely can bear the same meaning as repetition does in English, namely signaling replication of some sort wrt the meaning.
Two things here. First of all, why the reference to Malay or “Mindanaian”? Exactly what claim are you making about the connection between William Dampier’s anecdote from the Phillipines in 1691 and the phrase “samo samo” reportedly used by American soldiers and Japanese in the period right after WWII? Are you claiming that the phrase entered English in 1691 and lurked without being recorded for 250 years? Or are you implying that a Filipino-English substrate underlies some Japanese-English contact language that supposedly gave rise to the phrase? I’m not just being flip—this is quite unclear to me.
Second, I guess that reduplication might have that role in M and “M.” But there are all sorts of problems here—reduplication is very common in Malay-Indonesian; it’s everywhere and it serves a host of purposes. Even if invoking Malayo-Polynesian languages makes sense in this particular case (and I’m not sure it does), reduplication is just too widespread to hang a specific argument on. And if we’re really talking formally about a contact language (and so far our info is just too thin to say), reduplication is as you know one of the recurrent structural features of pidgins and creoles—there’s getting to be a sizable literature on that. So again, this phenomenon seems to me too general and diffuse to make—convincingly, at least—the kind of very specific argument you’re attempting here. The reduplication might have come about in all sorts of ways.
Can you think of another example? Even an unreduplicated one?
Absolutely no need to water down the criteria—coming up with a reduplicated example is no problem at all: “so so.” We use it in EXACTLY the same context. “How’s it going?” “So so.” “How’s it going?” “Same old, same old.” And hey, they even sound similar. I’m not sure I agree with you that “same old, same old” is so structurally weird. What’s structurally NORMAL in short greeting or response phrases that don’t need to have an S-V-O order? These kinds of short exchanges that are typically used at meeting and parting in English are often reduplicated: “Night, night!” “Bye, bye!” “Hi, hi!” “Kissie, kissie!” (I even wonder whether the same thinking doesn’t inform the “XXOO” sign-off in letters, though I admit that’s wild speculation.) But in any case, “so so” offers an obvious structural template for “same old, same old.” Sure, “same old, same old” is two words, rather than one, but is it justified to demand an exact structural parallel? Isn’t it possible that part of the success of “same old, same old” was its perceived novelty—its extension of an already extant template? My guess is that novelty occasionally helps innovations spread. For instance, I suspect that the phrase “You got another think coming” spread so successfully in the early decades of the 20th C precisely because its structural oddity lent it a certain ear-grabbing catchiness.
I have no idea when “so so” in this usage started in English, but books.google.com has a clear example of the use from 1882; I stopped looking when I found an example from well before WWII, but I’ll bet the earliest citation date can be pushed back much earlier.
David, the argument you’re making seems to me a classic folk etymology argument: 1) The phrases sound similar; 2) their meanings are not the same but they’re close; 3) they don’t show up at exactly the same time but they appear within a short time of each other; 4) one must have given rise to the other! It’s step four, of course, that bothers me most here. But it’s that inexactitude in the other steps that allows people to make that ill-advised jump to the final conclusion. The fact that “samo samo” and “same old, same old” are used in different contexts IS important. The fact that main periods of usage between them are separated by decades IS important. Those things have to be explained before you leap to that final step.
Last edited by patschwieterman (2010-07-31 03:02:08)
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“Same same” is what sellers of pirated clothes say. Is “samo samo” a pidgin version of ‘same same’ or ‘really’ a SE Asian word? Repetition is a major feature of pidgins. “Lukluk” is ‘stare’ while “luk” is ‘glance at’.
I’ve always mentally supplied two different nouns to “same old, same old” (job, life, food, sh*t).
Soso means insipid, lacking salt, in Spanish. From ‘insalsus’, apparently.
Last edited by JuanTwoThree (2010-07-31 03:38:24)
On the plain in Spain where it mainly rains.
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Actually, so-so in English is a pretty good parallel. It’s (in much usage nowadays including what I judge to be the most relevant usage here) an adjective modifying adverb, and is used repeated without its head. It never occurred to me that it could have come from the Spanish word, but I suppose that is possible. “insipid†> “medium, mediocre, neither good nor bad.â€
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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I have to concede that the gap between Dampier’s citation and the mid 20th c. is rather large, despite the number of times his account was reprinted. And it’s not clear that “samo samo” was not influenced by English in the first place.
There is one thing which bothers me nonetheless. If samo samo did evolve from a misapprehension of same old same old, why would that not constitute an eggcorn? It’s a degenerative eggcorn. If samo samo had been the chicken, and same old same old its progeny, that would have been a clear eggcorn because there is an introduction of new imagery and reinterpretation of the constituent parts. If it works one way, then it must work the other; the change is a loss of imagery. Not pretty, but an eggcorn to my eye. “Eggcorn” understood as an “acorn”.
I’ve always assumed that the noun implied by same old, same old was story.
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Hmm…So in this case the chicken came before the eggcorn?
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I had written:
Given the usage of samo samo […] to mean “it’s the same, it’s all one†the shift to “it’s one and the same†or “it’s all the same†is not great.’
Pat responded: ¶
Hmmnnh—that seems like an unlikely argumentative tack to run with in this case. If the shift is so obvious, why hasn’t it left any trace at all? Why hasn’t anyone found a single instance of “samo samo” being used in the current context in the TWENTY-FIVE YEARS
OK, I was replying to an argument that I thought you were giving, that (to quote my own post with boldfacing for clearer emphasis) “ samo samo is, because of its meaning, not a likely candidate for a source for same ol’ same ol’ . â€
.
The chronological gap issue is a different argument, and a valid one.
why the reference to Malay or “Mindanaian”? Exactly what claim are you making about the connection between William Dampier’s anecdote from the Phillipines in 1691 and the phrase “samo samo” reportedly used by American soldiers and Japanese in the period right after WWII? Are you claiming that the phrase entered English in 1691 and lurked without being recorded for 250 years?
No, I wasn’t claiming that. I meant that if samo samo was being used in one or more of the many languages of Mindanao in 1691, it might very well still have been used in that area during the intervening centuries and still be around to influence Japanese and/or Allied troops in the area in WWII. That could have happened whether or not Malay had anything to do with it, and my wording was an attempt to allow for that possibility. (It is fascinating to find more-or-less obscure locutions recorded by the early grammarians in the 1500’s and 1600’s here in Mexico still being used in ordinary speech by Nahuatl, Mixtec, Zapotec etc. speakers.)
Second, I guess that reduplication might have that role in M and “M.” But there are all sorts of problems here—reduplication is very common in Malay-Indonesian; it’s everywhere and it serves a host of purposes. Even if invoking Malayo-Polynesian languages makes sense in this particular case (and I’m not sure it does), reduplication is just too widespread to hang a specific argument on. And if we’re really talking formally about a contact language (and so far our info is just too thin to say), reduplication is as you know one of the recurrent structural features of pidgins and creoles—there’s getting to be a sizable literature on that. So again, this phenomenon seems to me too general and diffuse to make—convincingly, at least—the kind of very specific argument you’re attempting here. The reduplication might have come about in all sorts of ways.
I agree with all you say here except what you think I had been arguing for. I had thought you were saying the reduplication made sense in English but would not have a similarly-sensible meaning in Malay-Indonesian or whatever putative source language. Again, I was simply trying to say, I don’t see the semantics as being a barrier to the hypothesis of borrowing as a source. I certainly wasn’t arguing that the semantics force us (or limit or constrain us) to see borrowing as the only possible (or only likely) source. In other words, I don’t think I was trying to make the “very specific argument†you thought I was. I was arguing “the semantics make the borrowing look quite possible, not unlikelyâ€; I was not arguing “the semantics make borrowing highly likely and everything else unlikely.â€
coming up with a reduplicated example is no problem at all: “so so.” We use it in EXACTLY the same context. “How’s it going?” “So so.” “How’s it going?” “Same old, same old.” And hey, they even sound similar.
Yes, that is an excellent example (as I already have said a couple of posts back. It had not come to mind when I wrote the first post. Also, I was responding to Juan’s post; I didn’t see yours till today, Pat—I was ignorant of it but not ignoring it.) OK, two good examples—I’m all for finding a few more to compare. (Joe Grimes’ advice to always get 10 examples, recorded here , continues to be good wisdom, in my mind.)
I’m not sure I agree with you that “same old, same old” is so structurally weird. What’s structurally NORMAL in short greeting or response phrases that don’t need to have an S-V-O order?
Headless structures of any sort are “weirdâ€, and thus intrinsically interesting. (They are in fact a special interest of mine.) Both same old same old and so so combine that weirdness with the quirky (but as you note, typically English with a tendency towards baby-talkish—certainly not formal) reduplicative phrasal pattern.
My guess is that novelty occasionally helps innovations spread. For instance, I suspect that the phrase “You got another think coming” spread so successfully in the early decades of the 20th C precisely because its structural oddity lent it a certain ear-grabbing catchiness.
I agree entirely. I get frustrated with linguistic models that don’t allow for, or completely sideline, this kind of motivation.
David, the argument you’re making seems to me a classic folk etymology argument: 1) The phrases sound similar; 2) their meanings are not the same but they’re close; 3) they don’t show up at exactly the same time but they appear within a short time of each other; 4) one must have given rise to the other It’s step four, of course, that bothers me most here. But it’s that inexactitude in the other steps that allows people to make that ill-advised jump to the final conclusion. The fact that “samo samo” and “same old, same old” are used in different contexts IS important. The fact that main periods of usage between them are separated by decades IS important. Those things have to be explained before you leap to that final step.
Yes. Which is why I ended my post saying, “this is all interesting and suggestive, but it hardly constitutes conclusive evidence.†Which, as I suggested, is a watered down version of your view that it is “interestingly suggestive, but a million miles from good evidence.†I guess I just think it is more like a hundred miles. I’d be quite happy to compromise on a thousand!
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2010-08-02 16:28:13)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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